A look at the memento mori of paradiso: the vanitas and its transmission of the disappointment of the world

Abstract

When we experience a sensitive encounter with an artistic piece, the accuracy of what the artist saw from his own tremor is awakened in the depths of our spirit. José Lezama Lima takes the pen as if it was a brush and draws on the canvas of his work Paradiso a poetic narrative that incites our sensibility. The presence of a vanitas in the first and seventh chapters stimulates us beyond the intellectual recognition of this plastic appearance. The theme of life as vanity, the memento mori that comes with this vanitas, is transmitted as a messa-ge of the disappointment of the world, touching our deepest and most human fibers.